Monday, January 28, 2008

Welcome Back, Paige!

File Under: TV Obsessions

She's back!

(special thanks to Dan, aka 41North87West, for reminding me that I wanted to make mention of Trading Spaces in my blog.)

I used to be a fan of the TLC show Trading Spaces. You know the one where two homeowners agree to redecorate a room in each other's house. They have 2 days and $1000 bucks. Each team has a designer, and there's a carpenter to build stuff. The person who held things together, helped as needed and hosted the show was Paige Davis. The formula was simple and fun. The talented designers showed that you could do a lot at home for a relatively small amount of money. There was the element of unpredictability when Hilda Santo-Tomasz was one of the designers. Remember the wall of straw?

In 2005, the producers of the show made a shocking change...no more host. Paige was fired so that the show could move in a "new direction." Ratings fell but the show still managed to survive, barely.

New producers stepped in and decided that the show needed to go back to what worked, they needed to go back to what made the show such a success in the first place. Paige was asked to return, as were designers Hilda Santo-Tomasz, Frank Bileck, Laurie Smith and Doug Wilson. The first new episode aired on Saturday 1/26 and it was fun to see the "old gang" back doing what was so entertaining and what made the show such a success in the first place. :)

Trading Spaces airs Saturday nights at 8 pm Central on TLC.

(photo above goes uncredited for now. It's lovely and I will give credit for it once I know whose it is)